


Under the Hill

by just_a_dram



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Magic, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Power Dynamics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-11-01
Packaged: 2018-11-02 22:00:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10953561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_a_dram/pseuds/just_a_dram
Summary: Weary of life in the Southron Kingdom, Jon of the Undead, of whom songs of the last war are sung, begs sanctuary in Queen Sansa's fae court.





	1. An Entreaty

**Author's Note:**

> Vaguely inspired by the Tuatha Dé Danann.

After the last war, her people withdrew to the _sídhe_ , becoming people of the mounds, who sometimes walk among humans, but do not willingly throw open their gates to mortals. Unexpected defeat has made them wary of those who drove them underground. It’s understandable. Jon of the Undead has tried and failed to live amongst his father’s people, but in spite of every glamour he works, humans will not have him. He tried and failed to live among the faeries to the south too, which is why he has come to his once half-sister’s court to beg entrance. Even so, he would not think less of her should she bar her kingdom to him.

The kingdom hides underneath a hill marked as fae only by a thorn tree. Humans know better than to disturb such trees and hills, but the entrance would be impossible to make out if Jon were not now one of them. To this place he has come, seeking sanctuary without guarantee of acceptance.

The inclination of the imposing fae woman who guards the warded entrance at its base is clear. She would rather keep him out, but it is not her choice to make: Sansa rules here and who is granted or denied entrance falls under her authority. When the queen sends her response to Jon’s entreaty, the woman’s frown is as fierce as her hulking form in her plated silver armor. She doesn’t deign speak aloud Sansa’s consent, only grimaces at the almost immaterial missive that bears Sansa’s decision. Jon spies it over the woman’s shoulder in Sansa’s elaborate feminine script, a grown woman’s version of the girlish writing she practiced in the school room beside Jon and their brothers with a lesser fae teacher serving as master to the king’s children.

Though it was a hundred years ago, he remembers this warrior fae woman from the war: Brienne of the Isle of Women, raised to knighthood by one of the kings, who rose and fell so quickly in those last days. She is remarkable, not because she is unattractive, an oddity amongst their kind, but because she fought valiantly, better than many, who turned their backs on their own, becoming solitary creatures dedicated to mischief, when all seemed lost. He would forgive her any amount of rudeness.

“I haven’t come to harm your queen, Brienne.”

“You won’t. I won’t allow it,” she says, letting the enchanted letter disintegrate between her fingers.

“Your queen chooses her sentries well. I’m glad to see it.”

Brienne flushes above her armor and looks down to the giant white direwolf at his side, his companion throughout the war and beyond. “You’ll want to bring that beast.”

“I will.” He goes nowhere without Ghost, and while he is not assured of Sansa’s welcome, he is certain she will understand his need to have his direwolf close.

“Keep him under control.”

Jon fought on the same side as Sansa’s wide shouldered warrior, but she fixes his wrists behind his back with rudimentary binding magic all the same, as if he is not to be trusted. Precaution is good. Precaution and intelligence have kept his sister alive, so while he could easily break the bond, he allows it without complaint and follows in her wake, deeper into the hillside towards Queen Sansa’s court.

It may be spring above, where magic holds no sway, but below it is unnaturally cold. Instead of the perennial summer of some kingdoms, winter rules here. Their family came from the northern islands, where they ruled as the Kings of Winter. Thousands of years have passed since they came to these lands. Still his mother’s people never tire of snow and ice. Indeed, it grows colder with every step and darker too, until the path is lit only by dangling icicles that give off a dim otherworldly glow and a great dark cavern looms before them. It is impressive to look upon, these charms, but it could be the extent of the Northern Kingdom’s power. Some kingdoms have been reduced to as much and guard the truth of it from other courts as carefully as they do from the humans.

Jon does not know the full scope of Sansa’s power. She was but a child when he left his mother’s people. A faerie’s power grows with time, so the years could have made her more powerful than she seemed like to turn out, when her interest in magic only amounted to working simple charms on her dresses and braids. She started at a disadvantage: his sister was not meant to inherit the seat of their family’s power, so she was not taught to wield magic as Robb was. Her fate was to marry well and grace a male faerie’s court as a pleasant companion.

How things change. For all of them.

Faeries have not only grown wary but weaker too with their defeat, but as Jon and Brienne pass through the arched mouth of the cavern and look down on the court below, Sansa does not appear weak to his fae heightened senses. No, sitting upon her hard throne, she looks nigh on as powerful as the queen to the south, who keeps dragons as pets and glamours her court to dance with flames as bright as Sansa’s court is dark with ice.

Sansa sits at the center of the cavern, her blazing red hair a beacon in the dark. Even from a distance it is clear she is a beauty nearly without equal. He recalls with fondness her childish beauty, but it has sharpened with time. She sits tall in her massive throne as if born to it. Her back is straight and her fingers are long, curling over the curved ends of its arms. A ruff of white fur drapes her neck, trailing over a gown of a dark grey silk. The last court Jon graced was one where Queen Daenerys reigned, and he grew accustomed after several decades to her brazen fashions and those she inspired in her subjects. In contrast, Sansa is covered from neck to foot, only her pale hands and slippered feet peeking out of her shimmering gown. It is simple by fae standards—no gauzy lace worked by tiny faerie hands, no precious gems mined from their mountains. She reminds him of her mother, for Catelyn was not one for ornament either.

Her eyes narrow, as she catches sight of him, coming down the stretch of stone stairs that bear him towards her throne with Ghost padding behind. It seemed no more than fifty steps, when he was at the top, but the stairs multiply beneath his feet, stretching out the distance he must go under her watchful stare, until he reaches the bottom. With his hands still tied behind with wisps of magic, her head tilts to the side, slowly, as if taking his measure.

He didn’t know how he would feel, seeing her for the first time, for they were never especially close. But even in the face of her chilling appraisal, he wants to stride to her throne and lift her to her feet, so as to press his face into her neck to see if she smells of home. It takes almost an enchantment to affix his black boots in place.

He is too emotional and always has been, a legacy of being half human. It used to embarrass him, the outbursts he couldn’t control—tears of hurt and sadness particularly, for lust and rage are emotions more suited to faeries. Even during the war, he gave way to his human emotions and made terrible mistakes as a result.

Though she was a gentle child, there is nothing human about Sansa. The crown atop her head is cast of iron and bronze—the strong metals of winter—and the spikes that extend upwards like narrow edged daggers are tipped in frost. It must be heavy, but it does not dip with the tilt of her head, held perfectly in place by a charm. He feels it, her magic, a pulse that strains towards him, searching him with a whispering touch that raises the hairs on the back of his neck. A dozen feet separate them, but thanks to her magic, they are as close as if he truly breached the distance to take her in his arms.

The court had ignored their descent. Human sized fae like Jon and Sansa and Brienne, _Aos Sí_ , the aristocracy of the faerie world, and lesser fairies of all sizes, gentry and rustic alike, who have taken refuge in this court, flitting and twittering and lounging about the cavern, unfazed by his approach. With their queen’s attention deliberately locked upon him, however, a hush comes over the court. Even the soft laughter of the rustics, who rarely go silent, dies out by the time Ghost sits obediently at his side. The room stills, as the faeries stop to watch their queen’s evaluation of him.

A lesser fae approaches from the side, long, heavy skirts dragging over the glossy stone and wisely moving in a wide arc around his direwolf. Gentry, Jon gauges from the size of her; she is pretty for her kind with green eyes and blonde hair that curls over her narrow shoulders. Brienne leans down to whisper something in the girl’s pointed ear before taking a step back, her armor clanging together, as she crosses her arms over her chest. The girl’s eyes dart to Jon and away, fear tightening her features, despite how he carefully cloaks the parts of him that are Other. Like the flinty shine his eyes took on after he was brought back from the dead. It is a gleam that frightens even the oldest _Aos Sí_.

The girl steps onto the hoarfrost touched platform that supports Sansa’s throne, while the queen’s eyes rove him as fixedly as her questing magic, indifferent to all else. The girl bows, her arms stretching out perpendicular to her form in graceful obeisance. As her head dips, their queen finally turns to acknowledge her subject, who from the official way she announces Jon’s presence must be a herald of the court.

Her voice is clear and bright, filling the chamber without the need of magical projection. “May I present Jon of the Undead, Commander of Dragons, and Guardian of the Wall, Your Grace.”

“Yes,” Sansa says, a fine red brow arching. “The Prince Who Was Promised.”

There is a ripple through the crowd—equal parts verbal astonishment and hiccups of magic, signatures of faerie horror and awe. Some of her subjects might wish harm on him at the revelation of who it is that stands amidst them. Even Sansa might desire it.

Just as at Daenerys’ court, faeries here as a whole are no more likely to be disposed to malice than benevolence. That does not mean that some are not by nature evil and some good. Indeed, Jon’s adoptive father, who ruled here before either of his children sat the throne, was by nature a very good faerie. Jon always thought Sansa good, when they were children, though ever cognizant of the differences between herself, a full blooded faerie, and her half-brother, who was but a halfling. The woman who sits before him, however, looks capable of any number of things he would not have imagined before now.

Perhaps the rumors are true. Perhaps she killed King Joffrey, who was to be her consort. Perhaps she was the architect of the murder of Petyr of the Vale as well, who some say she took as a lover prior to her majority, during the early days of the war.

“It is a title I do not lay claim to, Your Grace.” He cloaks his person to hide the marks of his rebirth, but his words are not a cloak for the truth. The title is nothing but a burden and feels a farce after losing everything of real worth.

Her magic retreats from him, as she rights her head and her index finger taps a quick rhythm against the arm of her throne. The flimsy bindings that held his wrists slither away, and though he feigned being entrapped by them, the stiffness they caused is real.

With a roll of his shoulders, he cracks his neck. “I would be rid of the honor if I could.”

She purses her lips. “I heard you’d left the Southron Kingdom.”

Word travels quickly from one kingdom to the next. He is not surprised to find that Sansa has heard of his leave taking of the south and Daenerys. “Yes, Your Grace.”

“Come, we are family. You may call me Sansa as before. Or sister. You need not bow before me.” Jon takes his cue and bends the knee on the cold stone to prove he is not here to lay claim to her throne. His head angles, though not as low as the lesser faerie, who announced him. He can still see Sansa gesture, a slight lift of her hand, indicating he should rise once more. “We can dispense with these rituals. No one will harm you here,” she adds, scanning the room slowly, her gaze drifting over his head to take in all of her restless subjects.

With her assurance, he is as good as warded against attack. Her purring alto is not the sweet soprano of youth that Jon recalls, singing songs of heroes past, but it carries to every ear. Every subject has been forewarned, a fact that will help Jon sleep tonight, should he be granted leave to stay.

No one in these times carelessly risks a king or queen’s displeasure. Despite the existence of innumerable magical punishments, exile is now the worst in a ruler’s arsenal of sentences. The outside world is too dangerous. Faeries who live in solitude either must take to the darkest of paths, twisting their true natures to survive, or become domesticated creatures, doing the bidding of humans in their homes—a humiliating prospect for most proud faeries.

“Thank you, Sansa.”

“What brings you here?”

“I would find refuge.” Not _claim_ , though he could as the adoptive son of Ned and Robb’s named heir, but _request_ , for he has no wish to impinge on Sansa’s authority here. He merely wants to come home. If there is a home left to him in this world.

“In our little kingdom?” she asks, her darkened lips curling in a smile that would set a human man’s knees to shaking. Being once half-human, Jon feels his pulse quicken, though perhaps not out of fear.

Another thing he hates about himself since he was reborn—he is not quite _right_.

“If you will have me.”

The air in the cavern crackles under her extended consideration, her subjects waiting on her decision with nearly as much tension as Jon feels coiling in his chest.

“Of course,” she finally says, levity bringing a charming lilt to the proclamation, as if his being welcome here was a happy, foregone conclusion. “I think we can find a place for you.”

Sansa claps her hands together, and the noise of the cavern slowly builds around them, as faeries return to their comings and goings at her command. Some do so reluctantly, their sidelong glances and dragging feet evidence of their continued interest in the faerie standing before their queen. It is not every day that someone who appears so prominently in the songs from the last war appears in the Northern Kingdom. The Northern Kingdom is the vastest of the fae kingdoms, but they lost so many during the war, being closest to the threat, that they number fewer than elsewhere. Most who fought this far north were slaughtered, including the rest of Jon and Sansa’s family. They are the last of an ancient line.

Jon longs for family. She is not human, but perhaps Sansa longs for it too. For he feels it again, the caress of her magic, entwining around him, drawing him wordlessly closer to the throne as it slips knot around his bones and tugs. With no reason to fight the pull, he steps towards her, close enough that she might speak softly, words meant only for him.

“I would speak to you privately. Tonight. After we feast.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa's intentions are unclear, and the way Jon responds to her gestures feels slightly beyond his control.

The feast set at Sansa’s court was substantial. Impressive even, given that many courts must dine on slim provisions since the war. Such a feast would not be out of place in the Southron Kingdom. Except, unlike the heavy aroma of dragon-fire roasted meats that fills the grand hall of Daenerys’ kingdom, sweets are the staple of the Northern Kingdom. They are not unusual in this: most everywhere confections are a favorite among faeries, and for a halfling, such a diet can prove disastrous in the long-term.

Even after his resurrection, Jon did not crave creamy delicacies the way the fae do. After decades of tooth achingly sweet fare, he was glad to pile his charger high with something more substantial in the Southron Kingdom. Tonight, however, the silver ruffle edged platters balancing towers of glistening baked goods, including a dazzling array of tangy lemon-flavored tarts and pies and puffs, which Jon recalls as his sister’s favorite, made him feel more at home than he has in a century or more. In true fae fashion, he eats more for pleasure than sustenance now anyway.

Some things have no hold over him since he died and came back, but fae drink is still as strong, and his mind is buzzy with the mead he drank, when he inspects the chamber he has been given by the queen. Even with his wits dulled by drink, it doesn’t take more than a cursory examination to realize she’s given him some of the finest accommodations like to be found in the kingdom—rooms fit for a king.

He does not like the implication.

“There’s been a mistake,” he says, speaking over the faerie who hovers in the doorway, whispering quick offers of additional blankets and pillows or another jug of mead or two.

“Your Grace?”

“I’m not your king,” he says, objecting to the title, “and there has been a mistake.”

“What can I do…” The faerie twists in the doorway, looking down the winding stony hallway, as if a more suitable title to call Jon will appear out of the darkness. “My lord?” he tries with a half bow, “to fix it? I live to serve,” he says, wearing a broad grin, as he lifts his head from his bow.

“Tell your queen that I have been given the wrong rooms.”

The extravagance of her gesture, for he is sure it was she who was responsible for the selection, makes him distinctly uncomfortable. Despite Ned Stark’s kindness, he was never treated so fine among his mother’s people before. No halfling ever is. Humans are more pets than the enchanted animals like Ghost with which faeries keep company. Accordingly, Ghost accepts the generosity of Sansa's gift without compunction, and Jon’s lesser faerie escort dances aside, as the massive direwolf brushes past him to circle before the fire three times and collapse silently to warm himself.

“You can tell her yourself, my lord, when she sends for you. I was asked to tell you to wait for the queen’s signal.”

“Signal?”

The faerie doesn’t answer, but adds, “And bring your wolf,” as he walks backwards out the door, sketching a second, lower bow as he disappears, obsequiousness standing in for true usefulness. Not the Jon can blame him for refusing to bring his complaint to the queen. For all her pretty manners, she is still not one with whom to trifle.

The heavy arched door closes behind the faerie without aid of fae hands, a minor bit of magic that no doubt is the extent of his abilities. Jon couldn't even manage as much once. Skill with a sword was the extent of his art, when last he was here.

This room shows substantial evidence of charms both minor and advanced. Jon scowls as he takes in his too rich chambers. He can feel the hum of magic and if he squints, the hazy effects of half a dozen enchantments illuminate the room in a soft glow. There was a time he wouldn’t have perceived it, but now it is patently clear.

Lit by a fireplace that burns with a steady blaze, the room is warmer than the grand hall or the feasting hall. It is as icy looking as the rest of the place, but too warm to sustain actual jagged icicles and frosted glass: the chilly looking details are all an illusion. Even the fire itself is sustained by magic. The flames that reflect off Ghost’s fur dance without consuming the logs, so as to never require feeding—a handy trick for fae, who hold trees sacred. To the right of the fireplace there is a passage he can’t entirely make out on the wall, charmed and concealed with more diligence than the rest, and at the center of the chamber, shimmering drapes hang from a large canopied bed, which he suspects will render him invisible if he lets them fall closed around him. Faeries have no shame, but it is a thoughtful addition for a halfling with some pretensions towards privacy.

He doesn’t bother with his boots before flopping gracelessly atop it. He only means to rest his eyes while he awaits Sansa’s call, but the mead or the fact that he hasn’t slept in a proper bed in months drags him under and he almost misses her signal in the depth of his dreamless sleep.

Perhaps he did miss it and the icy chill he feels creeping up his burned hand to wrap around his elbow and jerk him from his sleep is merely Sansa’s displeasure at his heavy slumber.

Scrubbing his face to shed the vestiges of sleep, Jon sits upright. Once he would have felt slow and stupid after imbibing faerie brewed mead, but there are no ill effects any longer. A long draw from the pitcher of heavy cream set on the table and a hunk of freshly baked bread stuffed in his mouth, and he feels fully revived and ready to meet with his once sister. He gives Ghost the rest of the nutty brown loaf, and they leave Jon’s chambers together, only stopping for Jon to shrug on the heavy fur he notices hung beside the door. He doesn’t remember it being there before, but things appearing and disappearing in faerie kingdoms is nothing to fret over. Whatever annoyance he might have felt at his rest being interrupted is eclipsed by gratefulness for the warmth, since the halls are cold.

He didn’t inquire where Sansa’s chambers were to be found. He didn’t need to. He feels in his bones they are close and the chill in his arm that roused him from his sleep draws him forward on an invisible lead, assuring him that he knows the way. Brienne’s presence beside a wooden door as wide as his own is confirmation that the sensation was not wrong to direct his feet right and not left at the fork just beyond his chamber. If he is not mistaken, his chamber must share a wall with hers. She might have knocked if she wanted a more direct way to signal him. But straightforwardness is not the fae way. They are creatures as labyrinthine as their dwellings.

“Brienne,” he says, as Ghost sits dutifully at his feet. “The queen sent for me.”

“And the beast.”

“So I’m told.”

“Behave yourself,” Brienne says, hand closing over the door handle.

“Always,” Jon assures her, secretly pleased at the audacity of Sansa’s sentry. Fawning subservience makes him uncomfortable.

“Even if the queen does not,” she adds under her breath, as Jon enters.

His step falters, turning to catch a glimpse of Brienne’s frown as the door closes solidly behind him.

Sansa stands before her own fire, her form a dark silhouette in front of the flickering flames. She looks over her shoulder at him and beckons him to come in as she steps away from the stone hearth. “Jon, join me.”

“Do I need worry for my safety?” he asks, feeling both bemused and slightly ill at ease after Brienne’s warning.

She draws her hair over her shoulder with a cock of her head. “Your safety?”

“Your sentry seems to think you might... misbehave. I have been forewarned.”

He can better make her out, as she comes under the guttering light of the iron chandelier hung above their heads. She has changed from her heavy gown into something more fae by design. Instead of seamed construction, a high neck, and dagged sleeves, this gown drapes her curves like liquid. Held at the shoulders with delicate silver wolves, the pale blue fabric is filmy and lustrous, begging to be touched. It would tear under an overeager touch.

He grimaces at the thought. His mind will go to the most monstrous places.

“Brienne misunderstands. Tonight, I only want to sit with my brother. And reminisce if you can bear it?”

It isn't what he was expecting, when she invited him here—some explanation of the terms he must abide by in order to stay, perhaps—but it is welcome.

She steps into him and his arms fold around her. She feels good in his arms and he lets himself indulge in the pleasure of pressing her tightly to her chest until her feet lift off the ground and she clings to his neck. Soft and unassuming, her gentle magic sinks around him, warming him as surely as his new fur.

A black iron spike, one of several that punctuates her crown, pushes coolly into his cheek, as she turns her face into his before slipping free of his embrace with an almost shy smile.

They have never touched like that before. Not once. But it felt familiar, a sensation as old as time itself.

Jon is at a loss for words, and perhaps for once, his eloquent sister is similarly rattled, when she bends to run her hand over Ghost’s head and bury her fingers in the ruff of his fur.

No one is so brave or so foolish to approach his direwolf without Jon’s leave, but Ghost doesn’t mind Sansa’s touch any more than Jon did. He noses at her skirts, demanding more.

“I’m glad he is alive and well,” she says, scratching the top of the direwolf’s muzzle. “One sometimes hears conflicting reports of what became of the pair of you.”

All the rest of the Stark direwolves—one for each of Ned Stark’s children—perished in the war alongside their fae companions. Sansa’s was the first and the mildest of them all, much like the girl who would feed her giant wolf from the table.

“We’ve endured.”

“Quite well in the Southron Kingdom?”

“Yes, but it’s not home.”

Stroking Ghost’s flank, she inhales deeply, and he can see tension creep into her shoulders. “If you have earned Daenerys’ wrath, it would be best for you to tell me, so we might prepare ourselves for what's to come.”

“I would never endanger you or the North that way. Dragons won’t be tracking me here.”

She nods, and finally looks back up at him. “I was as glad of him as I was you, when I saw you descend those stairs.”

“I don’t doubt you preferred he’d come alone. My coming here uninvited must have caused you some concern.”

“I trust you.”

She sounds as if she believes it. Jon finds himself hoping it’s true. He doesn’t want there to be suspicion between them, the last of his family.

“You’ll let me borrow him now and then, won’t you?” she asks, straightening up to her full height.

“He has a mind of his own, but it looks as if he’ll find his way here regardless,” Jon says, sending Ghost off to find a place to rest with a flick of his hand.

Her gaze follows his silent padding across her chamber and the light catches the crown’s polished edge with the motion of her head. It is a circlet of bronze marked with fae runes and topped by spikes, but it sets delicately atop her loose red hair, completing her effect—enticing and dangerous at the same time.

“A crown becomes you.”

“It was forged for Robb after the old crown was lost.” Her hand unconsciously rises as if to touch one of the points before dropping back to her side. She betrays no such discomfort in front of her people, and Jon wonders at her letting down her guard before him. She’s softer here. More like he remembers her from before. “Mother sent it to me, when we went below ground.”

“You’ve spoken with her?”

“Now and again,” she says, looking away. “By raven.”

Jon has heard tell of what became of Catelyn. She is already the stuff of legend. Humans dare not speak her name and call her Lady Stoneheart in hushed tones, lest it reach her ears. Faeries fear her nearly as much as the humans do. With good reason if even half the tales are true. Having met with enough horrors during the war, he would rather never see what ghastly transformation has taken the woman who once resented his presence in her husband’s kingdom.

“I’m sorry, Sansa.”

“You speak the truth, don’t you? Then I don’t mind telling you, she is not at peace.”

“Are you?” he asks with real interest, for he is not. He hasn’t known real peace in so long and so wishes to find it.

“I might be.”

She gives him a soft sort of smile that he can’t help but return, though he knows his is not so fair as hers.

“Will you sit?” she asks, moving to the high-backed chairs set around a small round table.

As she sinks into one of the pair, Jon follows her lead. The table is topped with two platters of food—one comprised entirely of sweets and the other piled with grapes, figs, dates, hunks of cheeses both soft and hard, small pots of jam, and several glistening honey combs—and a pitcher and two goblets. He suspects the cheese platter is meant for him and he nods in silent thanks, as she passes him a pewter plate.

“Wine?” she asks. “Or do you still prefer ale?”

“You remember?”

“I do. Our wine was too strong. The mead too. Arya would join you in drinking that dreadful swill you liked.”

His surprise must show at her recollecting such details.

“I remember everything, I’m afraid, including how dreadful I was.”

“No,” he responds quickly with the intention of putting her at ease, but he can see from the quirk of her brows that by tripping over himself to squash her apprehension, he has only confirmed it for her.

Sansa was the sibling to whom he was least close, by virtue of her wanting to imitate and please her mother in all things. But that was years ago. Centuries. He holds no ill will against her.

“Don't deny it. I was. Especially to you.”

“Well, I was dour faced and moody.”

She laughs, tipping her chin down with a flutter of her lashes. “Are you still?”

“Yes. Not quite as human though.”

“Whatever we might have made you feel at the time, 'tis not a bad thing—being a halfling. You’ve certainly shown there is no shame in it, and it made you… kinder?”

He wonders what Sansa would think should he uncloak himself and show what his rebirth has wrought. He is not that boy.

She reaches across the space between them, her hand closing over his, where it rests on the arm of the chair. She squeezes. “I _am_ glad you’re here, Jon.”

“So glad you have placed me in the rooms next to yours.”

She bites her lower lip, considering him for a pause long enough to tighten his chest. “Perhaps too glad.”

He is off-balance. At once comfortable and on the knife’s edge in her presence. He certainly doesn’t know how to interpret her reservation, but he ventures to allay her fears. Leaning towards her with lowered voice, he swears, “I will do you no harm. On my life, I won't.”

“I know. I’ve thought on it, and I do, I trust you.” Her thumb rubs over the back of his hand. “That’s no small thing in these times.”

She’s right, and with her thumb rubbing circles over his hand and her blues eyes refusing to leave his, he feels as if the room has grown exponentially warmer.

“What did you think, when you discovered your chambers were so close to mine? That I meant to spy on you?”

No, Jon suspected there might be an ulterior motive in giving him, the halfling come prince, such grand accommodations, but he did not worry his head over eavesdropping of the magical type or otherwise. He didn’t even sweep his chambers for a listening stone.

“I thought perchance you intended to placate a halfling with unseemly aspirations towards princely standing,” he offers.

“You are as unassuming as ere. That much I can see,” she says lifting her chin at his all black attire—too simple, too plain for the fae.

“Daenerys tried to smarten me up to her standards.”

“Never mind that. Though I would be happy to see a Stark symbol about you,” she says, raising her hand to press her fingertips lightly to his chest.

“I’m not a Stark, Sansa.”

“Nonsense.” She flattens her hand against his chest and he wills himself not to trap it there, fisting his hand atop the arm of the chair to keep it in place. “You always looked like him—father. Mother didn’t like that. A halfling with the king’s face. But I do.”

“It is the only face I’ve got.”

A dimple forms in her cheek at the twist of her mouth. “Except you cloak yourself, don’t you?”

When Jon can give no answer, she sits back in her chair, her limbs melting into the hardness of the wood with a boneless elegance. “I thought it easier to place you close by than to move you once we are of an accord. There is a door between us.” She lifts her hand to point behind him. “It is charmed presently, but it connects these two rooms—mother’s and father’s.”

She snaps her fingers and the charm dissolves. “You might come to me,” she says, reaching for the pitcher and her goblet, “whenever you like.”

He watches her pour, hand steady, unlike the thready pulse of his blood.

She sets her glass aside and then grasps his, which has gone untouched. “Are you glad to see me? You haven’t said.”

He raises the cup she has poured for him and drinks heavily, one aromatic mouthful after another. When he has drained it and there is nothing for it but to answer her, he pulls the rim away and swallows. “Perhaps too glad.”

Her darkened lips spread into a smile, terrifying and tempting. “I’m pleased to hear it.”


End file.
